Panama City Beach, FL -

City and county officials have announced that Spring Break has run its course in Panama City Beach and will no longer be marketed or advertised to college students.

The Tourist Development Council, Bay County Chamber of Commerce, City Council members and Bay County Commissioners have agreed to take steps to end Spring Break in Panama City Beach. The first of those steps is to take the nearly $500,000 budget for Spring Break advertising and marketing and, instead, use it to advertise to families and affluent travelers in major cities in the Northeast and Midwest. In fact, they plan to double the budget to almost $1 million.

"It's only the natural progression of things that have been happening to the Beach the past few years." says one official. "With the volume of higher-end condos and resorts that have been developed, we need to get bigger spenders in here to avoid a local economic collapse. It's an evolution, so to speak. Panama City Beach is growing up. Spring Break can't last forever."

Tourism officials are worried that the reputation Panama City Beach currently has as a Spring Break party town could significantly hurt its chances to lure a demographic of visitors capable of sustaining the quickly changing local economy.

In response to the city's new direction with tourism, officials will put new laws and oridinances into effect beginning in 2008, similar to those used by Daytona Beach in the late 90's when they decided it was time to end their reputation as a Spring Break party town. Exactly who the new laws and ordinances will affect remains to be seen.

The move has many locals concerned, since so many smaller local businesses depend on Spring Break as a major source of revenue. Officials have agreed to hold a public forum to discuss concerns and objections but, as one official noted, the decision to change direction has already been made. The meeting date and location of the public forum have not been be announced.

UPDATE: This was an April Fool's Day Joke. Everything in it was completely fabricated.

When the city see's how much money they loose then they will be sorry they did it ... but it's to late then

The city is already in an economic collapse. They flooded the marked with new condo's and houses TOO fast. There are currently 50,000 units(houses, condos, etc...)available for sale in Bay County according to this one article... 50,000!!!!!!!!!I'm searching for the article I saw that in earlier right now... But yea, I think everyone will still come next year, but 2009 may be another story...

Happy April Fools Day!

I made it all up...

Nice... very nice. I switched out Steve's Viagra with the blue M&Ms earlier today. April Fools to you too!

I was wondering where all my blue pills went...

Good to see you in the forums Short Bus!

Hope the April fools joke didn't cause too much of a problem. It was either this or clear plastic wrap between the toilet bowl and seat.

BTW - Did you hear Google is giving away free broadband?

lol *****hole...

lol but seriously, what I said was true...

and the clear plastic wrap on the toilet is awesome, did that last year.

Sorry, I couldn't resist!

At least I came clean at the end of the day. I could've let it go for a while and it would've started some nasty rumors... heh!

But, what you said is a valid point.
Who knows what the future holds for PCB???

Gee thanks Steve, you made my jaw drop, but not in a good way like it did while in PCB several times.

IF this were true, I would predict a Spring Break revolution.

Forget Revolution, I was ready to burn that B#$ch down!!!!!!!!!! Nice Arpil Fools Joke, I already started planning next years trip...lol.

I got caught on this one (forgetting it was April 1), so much so that I fired a Bay County friend (a local attorney, not Ben Bollinger, LOL) a note about this and he dug out this recent News Herald showing me that the push to kill Spring Break funding and such was a pretty hot topic, and very possible:

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Group pushes ‘Family Spring Break’

March 18, 2007
By Ed Offley

http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:...lnk&cd=1&gl=us

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I don't have a horse in the race here, but I'm thinking that the market should decide. If and when PCB goes so upscale that Spring Breakers can't afford it, spring break in PCB will die off naturally. If and until that happens, it sounds like killing spring break directly and quickly could hurt many businesses.